Victoria Pade - Hometown Sweetheart

He shrugged. “Pretty close, yeah. And we just wanted what was best for her. Plus it seemed only fair that—since her money had helped begin things—we do whatever we could to keep them going. But it wasn’t for her sake alone. Marti, Ry and I wanted to go on working together, so it was for our sakes, too. We were all just lucky that we made it.”

Still Neily thought it was admirable that Theresa’s family had considered her contribution and made her welfare a priority. Neily was also impressed that rather than taking the easy way out of caring for a grandmother with special needs, Wyatt and his siblings hadn’t cut and run when the opportunity to do that had presented itself.

The more she learned about Wyatt, the more she leaned away from any thoughts of neglect.

And toward liking him.

They both had another drink of their hot chocolates before Neily decided to use his mention of Theresa as her opening to talk about the older woman. And keep herself from thinking things about Wyatt Grayson that she didn’t want to be thinking.

“So even eight years ago Theresa was basically in the shape she’s in now?”

He nodded, a sad, sober expression on his handsome face. “Gram has had mental-health issues as long as I can remember. She gets into severe depressions. She has times when she’s out of touch with reality, delusional—that’s happening more often as she ages. She was always fearful, and that developed into full-blown phobias—those are what started her being housebound and needing round-the-clock care, and why none of us can understand her doing what she did to get here.”

“And the memory issues?”

“Those are getting worse, especially her short-term memory. Sometimes she thinks that things that happened decades ago were just yesterday, and she forgets what did happen yesterday. She’s really a tortured soul.”

“Does she have a specific diagnosis?”

“A laundry list of them. And she’s on medications to treat them all, which helps to some extent. She’s also had therapy, but nothing has made a huge improvement.”

“I’m assuming the possibility of early abuse has been looked into?” Neily said.

“She’s denied that there was any of that. She makes her childhood sound perfect. Happy. She frequently says that she was the apple of her parents’ eyes, how much she loved them, how devastated she was when they died. I know that losing my grandfather caused more deterioration, and then losing my father brought on more still, so maybe there’s something to that.”

“And even when she talked about her perfect childhood she didn’t tell you anything about Northbridge or that she still had the house here?” Neily asked, finding it curious that Theresa had been so secretive about that.

Wyatt shook his head. “Like I said before, the only mention of where she grew up was a generality.”

“So she didn’t tell you that her family—her father—had owned land here?”

That seemed to surprise him. “No. You mean her father owned more than the house?”

“She told me today that he—and then she—owned the section of land you can see from the sunporch, where there are houses now.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

Neily shrugged. “I’ve never heard that, but it isn’t as if I would have heard about who owned land twenty years before I was born. I was just wondering if maybe that should be looked into. If it’s true, maybe that’s what she thinks she can reclaim.”

“Maybe that’s what was taken from her, you mean? Do you think someone stole it from her or swindled her?”

Neily shrugged again. “I don’t know. I suppose old land records could be checked into.”

Wyatt’s expression had gone from sad to intrigued. “Want to play detective with me?”

Neily laughed. “I don’t think that’s in my job description.”

“Might be fun, though,” he said with an alluring wiggle of his eyebrows.

Too alluring.

Neily reminded herself that she was supposed to be steeled against his charm. But apparently even early practice steeling herself against whatever her brothers threw her way was not enough when it came to resisting Wyatt Grayson.

Both of their cups were empty by then and noticing that seemed like an aid to her cause. Rather than respond to Wyatt’s it-might-be-fun-to-play-detective-with-him, she said, “We should probably go.”

Wyatt didn’t immediately agree. He went on looking at her, smiling as if he was enjoying the view. But he didn’t push the suggestion that she help investigate old land records and after a moment he stood and held her chair while she stood, too.

He’d already paid for their hot chocolates, and now he tossed a tip onto the table before he followed Neily out of the shop.

Don’t let him get to you, she told herself on the way to her car, which was parked at the curb a few doors down.

She slid in behind the wheel and started the engine as Wyatt slipped into the passenger seat. It didn’t help that when he did, he angled toward her and stretched his arm across the back of her seat. It also didn’t help that he was a big man and that he seemed to fill the interior of the car with hundred-proof testosterone.

“So what do you say?” he asked as she headed for South Street. “Will you help me out? I know Northbridge is small and you can probably just point out where I’d find land records, but you also probably know the city clerk—or whoever handles that kind of thing—and could make it easier for me to get access to whatever I need.”

That was all true.

“You could think of it as helping Gram—that is in your job description, right?” he added.

“Right…”

Saying that made it sound as if she were wavering.

She did want to know all she could about Theresa and what was behind the older woman’s flight to Northbridge. A complete picture could be helpful.

But it would mean spending more time alone with Theresa’s grandson. And while they had talked about Theresa, and while talking to Wyatt had given Neily more insight into him and his relationship with his grandmother—all of which qualified as information she needed to be gathering—she couldn’t deny that tonight had seemed less like work and more like an evening with a handsome, easy-to-talk-to, amusing and entertaining man.

It had seemed more like the date she’d been insisting to herself it wasn’t.

“Come on,” he cajoled as she pulled into the driveway of the Hobbs house. “Help me out. For Gram’s sake. And for the sake of your whole one- T town.”

Neily put the car into Park but left the engine running and glanced over at Wyatt. “For the sake of my whole one- T town?”

“What if some horrible, dastardly deed was done to Gram to wrench her land from her, and right in your midst is the rat who did it? Wouldn’t you want to know? What if the rat is your mayor or someone in some position of power, doing more dastardly deeds behind the scenes without anyone knowing? He or she could be embezzling funds or pilfering retirement accounts or selling bogus city bonds—”

“Those would be dastardly deeds,” Neily agreed with a laugh at his melodramatics.

“You are in charge of making sure any wrongs done against Gram are righted,” he pointed out.

The kind of wrong he was talking about was out of her province, but still, Neily was curious about whether Theresa actually had been a victim of some kind of wrongdoing, or if her mental state was further deteriorating.

Which gave her a reason to grant Wyatt’s request without admitting to herself that she kind of wanted to spend more time with him.

“All right,” she said as if he’d worn her down. “I’ll help you. But only to get a more complete picture of Theresa.”